Environment variables

["Nicholas S Castellano" <entropy@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu>]

>Viariables that do not contain paths are treated "specially". When a program
>starts, it determines which variables are "special" by reading a certain
>environment variable we define (e.g. "SPECIAL"), which contains the names
>of all "special" environment variables: for instance: 
>
>	SPECIAL=UNIXMODE,FUBAR
>
>This would declare the UNIXMODE and FUBAR environment variables to be treated
>specially, which means that no path conversion is done for these variables.
>Additionally, any environment variable which already contains "/", and any
>variable which is set (putenv()) to something containing a backslash, are
>added to the SPECIAL list, which would also be exported when spawning.
>
>Would this be too much trouble?

I think this is a good idea, but I also think it would be a better
idea to do it the other way around, that is, an explicit list of
variables on which path-translation should be done is given by the
user, and if none are specified then translate only PATH as the
default.

cheers,
entropy